Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
page 32 of 440 (07%)
page 32 of 440 (07%)
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In this case, touching the distinguishing the Law from the Gospel, we
must utterly expel all human and natural wisdom, reason, and understanding. All reason is above nature. Therefore by reason in Luther, or rather in his translator, you must understand the reasoning faculty:--that is, the logical intellect, or the intellectual understanding. For the understanding is in all respects a medial and mediate faculty, and has therefore two extremities or poles, the sensual, in which form it is St. Paul's [Greek: phrónaema sarkòs]; and the intellectual pole, or the hemisphere (as it were) turned towards the reason. Now the reason ('lux idealis seu spiritualis') shines down into the understanding, which recognizes the light, 'id est, lumen a luce spirituali quasi alienigenum aliquid', which it can only comprehend or describe to itself by attributes opposite to its own essential properties. Now these latter being contingency, and (for though the immediate objects of the understanding are 'genera et species', still they are particular 'genera et species') particularity, it distinguishes the formal light ('lumen') (not the substantial light, 'lux') of reason by the attributes of the necessary and the universal; and by irradiation of this 'lumen' or 'shine' the understanding becomes a conclusive or logical faculty. As such it is [Greek: Lógos anthrôpinos]. Ib. 206. When Satan saith in thy heart, God will not pardon thy sins, nor be gracious unto thee, I pray (said Luther) how wilt thou then, as a poor sinner, raise up and comfort thyself, especially when other signs of God's wrath besides do beat upon thee, as sickness, poverty, &c. And |
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